Hometeam: It's a whole new ballgame on Thanksgiving

Thursday

Mar 7, 2013 at 6:00 AM

Thanksgiving Day will have a different look for several high school football teams next fall. Six new Thanksgiving Day matchups will take place: Wachusett at Shrewsbury, Holy Name at Milford, Assabet at West Boylston, Northeast Metro Tech of Wakefield at Auburn, Sutton at Blackstone-Millville and Oxford against Bay Path at a site to be determined

By Bill Doyle TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

Thanksgiving Day will have a different look for several high school football teams next fall.

Six new Thanksgiving Day matchups will take place: Wachusett at Shrewsbury, Holy Name at Milford, Assabet at West Boylston, Northeast Metro Tech of Wakefield at Auburn, Sutton at Blackstone-Millville and Oxford against Bay Path at a site to be determined

Wachusett had been playing Holy Name on Thanksgiving, and Shrewsbury had been playing Milford. After Wachusett and Shrewsbury signed to play each other, Milford and Holy Name teamed up.

Shrewsbury High athletic director Jay Costa said Thanksgiving Day games against Milford hadn't drawn well in recent years. Milford left the Mid-Wach League this season in all sports except for football, and will compete in the Hockomock League in Eastern Mass. in all sports next year.

“With Milford going to Eastern Mass.,” Costa said, “there really hasn't been much of a connection there on Thanksgiving, so we're trying to find a way to get the kids more excited about the game.”

“We're both members of the Midland-Wachusett League,” Wachusett athletic director Jen Lynch said, “and our schools possess similar philosophies, and a natural rivalry excites in many of our current sport offerings.”

The teams had played each other earlier in the regular season, but the game next season will be held at 10 a.m. Thanksgiving Day at Shrewsbury.

“We tend to have a great fan base,” Lynch said, “and I would expect that adding a rival like Shrewsbury into the mix would only increase the excitement and the gate.”

Milford High athletic director Rich Piergustavo said Holy Name and Milford have agreed to play one another on Thanksgiving for two years. Next season's game will be Thanksgiving morning in Milford, and in 2014 it will be played at Worcester State.

“I don't have a problem with it,” Holy Name coach Mike Pucko said, “but you're not going to get a lot of people from Milford to drive up on Thanksgiving to see us play them here, and I don't think you're going to see a lot of Worcester people drive to Milford to see us play there on Thanksgiving morning. It's not a Fitchburg-Leominster rivalry, and it's not close by, so I don't see it as being a long-term solution, but it's fine for now.”

Holy Name has beaten Milford in each of the past three years earlier in the season.

“It's close to an hour ride,” Auburn athletic director Bill Garneau said, “and nobody wants to be on a bus on Thanksgiving Day for that long.”

Auburn needed to find another opponent after Oxford, its Thanksgiving foe for the past 42 years, decided to end the series. Finding another opponent available on Thanksgiving and willing to play a team that has won five consecutive Super Bowls wasn't easy. Auburn finally signed a two-year deal with Northeast Metro Tech, winner of the past two Eastern Mass. Division 4 Super Bowls.

“It would have been awful,” Garneau said, “for just about everybody else in the state to be playing football that week and for us to have only 10 games on our schedule. We're looking forward to it.”

Because Auburn and Holy Name have both signed only two-year deals for Thanksgiving, Garneau said the two schools have discussed playing each other on Thanksgiving beginning in 2015.

Auburn is still trying to schedule a game for either Sept. 6 or 7 or Oct. 25 or 26.

Oxford felt it could no longer compete with Auburn, especially after losing its co-op program with Sutton. Next fall Sutton will field its own team. Of the 37 students on Oxford's roster for last year's Thanksgiving Day game, Oxford athletic director John Doldoorian said, 21 came from Sutton and six were Oxford seniors, leaving the Pirates with only 10 returning players.

Oxford's plan to play Sutton on Thanksgiving fell through, so the Pirates looked elsewhere. Doldoorian said his school's game against Bay Path is 95 percent approved, but it hasn't been determined which school will host the game next fall. It will be Bay Path's Thanksgiving Day debut.

Oxford and Charlton, where Bay Path is located, are neighboring towns and vocational students from Oxford attend Bay Path, so Doldoorian believes that will help generate a lot of interest in the game.

Sutton and Blackstone-Millville will field varsity football teams for the first time next fall.

Sutton will have a co-op with Douglas High, which used to have a co-op with Bartlett High. Blackstone-Millville fielded a junior varsity team of 42 players last fall. Anthony Nalen, who coached BMR's JV team, will coach the varsity squad.

Sutton will visit Blackstone-Millville at 10 a.m. Thanksgiving Day.

Sutton athletic director Jeff Parcells said he expects the team to have 40 to 50 players. Sutton has not yet hired a coach.

The intensity of the West Boylston-Assabet game will also be bolstered by vocational students from West Boylston and Boylston attending Assabet. Students from Boylston who attend Tahanto can play football for West Boylston.

West Boylston ended its Thanksgiving Day series against Quabbin in order to play Assabet Regional in Marlboro. Instead of driving close to an hour to face the Panthers, the Lions will have to travel only about 15 minutes to play the Aztecs.

“I think it's going to be great,” said West Boylston coach Dave Tinglof, who considers Assabet coach Rob McCann a good friend.

West Boylston split games against Assabet the past two years, and they scrimmaged one another for several years before that. They also used to play each other in the 1970s and 1980s, but not on Thanksgiving. The two schools will play at West Boylston at 10 a.m. Thanksgiving Day next season and at Assabet the following year, possibly on the night before Thanksgiving.

Quabbin athletic director Ted Gumula said he has not yet been able to find a Thanksgiving opponent to replace West Boylston.

All high school football schedules will change in the fall to accommodate the new playoff system. Teams will play seven regular-season games, then three or four playoff or consolation games. The playoffs will be put on hold in order to play the Thanksgiving games, then conclude with the championship games.

Pucko isn't a fan of the new playoff system.

“I think there's going to be lot of kinks in it,” he said. “I think there's going to be a lot of people who aren't happy with it. I think after a year of this with those alternative games in November, I don't see this happening again.”

Pucko said schools won't know who they'll be playing in the playoffs or consolation games until the week before, so scheduling junior varsity and freshman games for those weeks will be difficult.

Contact Bill Doyle at wdoyle@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillDoyle15.